OUR Street Machine Summernats 31 mag is on sale now! Inside you’ll find all the in-depth burnout coverage, plus loads more; the SM team looked at every aspect of the event, from the mullets to the amazing show cars and everything in between.

We chat to the Summernats 31 Grand Champion, Grant Connor. His Bad Apple XR Falcon won the People’s Choice award on debut at Summernats 29, and this year went even further to claim the sword and join street machining royalty.

Summernats 31 opened with the City Cruise down Canberra’s Northbourne Avenue, with hundreds of tough cars streaming through the nation’s capital. The 20,000 onlookers were absolutely thrilled, and we chatted to the owners of some of our favourite cars that took part.

The Laurie Starling Scholarship for Innovation and Excellence in Vehicle Fabrication seeks to encourage and reward young apprentices striving to achieve greatness in the field. This year the award went to Corey Lepe, and we sat down with him for a chinwag about the significance of the award.

Farmtruck and AZN from Street Outlaws were a big part of Street Machine Summernats 31. They built a burnout truck with the help of the students at the Canberra Institute of Technology in the weeks leading up to the event, and in the mag you’ll find the diary of Chris Wroe, one of the students that helped build and maintain the truck over the weekend.

At Summernats you never know what you’re going to find around the next corner, so when we came across Bill Stevenson’s survivor G-Force Junkie Monaro, built by Steve Langham in the late 70s, our collective jaw hit the floor. This was one of the first blown street machines on the scene and was a real game-changer back in the day. Bill has preserved the car, and it was awesome to see it back in action.

Steve Titcumb debuted his new Chevy Camaro at Summernats 31, and boy is this thing evil! Aside from the menacing black paint and tough stance, there’s a whole lot of real estate poking out the bonnet. Up front is a 589ci big-block topped with a 14/71 blower and the injection hat off a Top Fuel dragster!

We’re all about showcasing the weird and the wonderful, and Brad Michalski and Cody Woods’s KE70 Corolla is certainly out there! There’s a lot going on here; from the rusted bodywork to the Ecotec V6 and blow-through carby turbo set-up, this car was always going to get attention.

The big news from the Summernats burnout comp was that the same bloke came first and second in the Masters! Matt James brought along two Burnout Masters cars – his UNWANTED VF ute and COMPACT Fairlane – and come Sunday they placed first and second respectively! We got his thoughts on winning the ultimate trophy in the sport.

You’ll find all of this, plus show cars from the Top 60 Elite Hall, action from the Horsepower Heroes dyno, the Supercruise, behind the scenes with Farmtruck and AZN, Tuff Street, and everything else weird and wonderful that Summernats 31 had to offer.